Best Of New Orleans Blog

Ask people from outside of south Louisiana to name a few famous New Orleans dishes and I’m willing to wager jambalaya will be right up there at the top with gumbo. That’s fine, but just try to find a good bowl of jambalaya in New Orleans.

Newcomers and visitors often arrive with the notion that jambalaya is some centerpiece of the New Orleans table and that it should be as prevalent in local restaurants as Tabasco bottles. I certainly did, and was rudely disabused of that notion on my very first meal as a New Orleans resident. I had absolutely no clue about local restaurants, so when I took a stroll to explore the blocks around my temporary Garden District lodgings that first night in town I was excited to find a place called Igor’s Garlic Clove and see jambalaya featured prominently on its menu. The Garlic Clove was attached and related to Igor’s Lounge & Game Room on St. Charles Avenue and, fortunately, it isn’t there anymore, having morphed into several different configurations in the intervening years. I can still recall how wretched and disappointing was that first New Orleans meal of brick-red, brick-dust-dry jambalaya with its burned bits of sausage and choking surfeit of salt. (more…)

Vi Landry died on Monday in a car accident. She was driving to Mississippi and was hit in a head-on collision. Vi was a native New Orleanian and writer who contributed to Gambit Weekly; her writing can be found in the Gambit archive. Also there’s pictures of her available at http://angeliska.livejournal.com. Vi was a dedicated writer who’d been studying in New York for the last couple of years and had recently moved back here. She’s survived by her mom and sister, and lots of friends who miss her and are thinking about her. Vi was 33. Her memorial is at Jacob Shoen funeral home on Saturday, 1-4. There will also be a second line parade for her on Sunday at 3, beginning at Dauphine and Press.

by Sam Winston

Wyoming proposes a law that would prohibit law enforcement from confiscating citizens’ firearms even in the time of an emergency.

They are not the only the state to do so.

“This year, Wyoming is one of at least five states to propose such a law; at least 21 others already have passed the legislation. It has been heavily promoted by the National Rifle Assn. in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.”

Most interesting, perhaps, is the role of Louisiana elected officials in this process. (more…)